Study About Teens:
A research from the University of California, Davis found that teens in multicultural situations struggle academically if they do not get regular and encouraging messages about cultures different than their own at school, home, and among their peers. Researchers observed that although these children attended ethnically diverse schools and claimed to have learned about other cultures in class, they didn’t always receive the same messages from friends and their families.
This was shown in a survey of more than 700 teenagers who attended public schools in the Southwestern United States. This had an impact on their academic ambitions for further education as well as their participation in and interest in school.
Maciel M. Hernández, assistant professor of human ecology and study’s primary author, noted that the conflicting messages that adolescents hear can be emotionally exhausting and have an impact on their academic performance. Youth “need to successfully engage with and be socially connected to people from varied backgrounds… it’s crucial to be fully a member of this fabric of society and understand cultural traditions that are not their own.
M. Dalal Safa, of the Psychology and Neuroscience Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a co-author of the article. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, on July 26, published the study. received consistent messages was surveyed. Students from different schools in the same area who are in sixth and ninth grade were surveyed by researchers.Only 4% of those polled said they regularly and strongly received affirmations of their cultural diversity from peers and family members.
The study’s queries to the teenagers included a wide range of topics, including what they had learned about different cultures and how much their friends and families had supported their learning and appreciation of it. In the survey, questions about family interactions included things like how frequently parents and other adults encouraged their children to read books about racial or ethnic groups other than their own, discussed significant figures or occasions in those groups’ histories with them, and emphasized that everyone is treated equally regardless of race or ethnicity.
Similar inquiries on peer interaction were made, however the researchers did not ask students where they engaged with peers, such as in extracurricular activities, sports, clubs, or places of worship. Additionally, students were questioned about their enjoyment of school, learning, and extracurricular activities as well as their plans for academic growth.
According to Hernández, it is not unexpected that children who indicated they listen in class and enjoy school also expressed a desire to pursue further education. Beyond that, she added, it was crucial to have kids who enjoyed going to school and were actively engaged by their encounters with a multicultural society. Their future success and other aspects of their lives are impacted by this.
Researchers hypothesized that the fact that youth with at least one immigrant parent were more likely to have higher levels of multicultural socialization than youth without immigrant parents may be due to the fact that their parents made a conscious effort to integrate into their diverse communities and passed these aspirations on to them.
The majority of respondents in the study were multiethnic (31.5%) and Latinx (31.8%). Whites made up 25.7% of the population, while Blacks made up 7.3%, Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders made up 1.4%, American Indians or Alaska Natives made up 1.4%, and people from the Middle East or North Africa made up 1%. “Most importantly, encouraging intercultural socialization in school, peer, and home environments is encouraging for enhancing adolescents’ academic functioning. There is much space for improvement, especially when only 4% of kids receive consistent messages, according to Hernández.
